The greatest mistake of Bud Selig's time as baseball's leader occurred in 2006, when he commissioned George Mitchell to investigate Major League Baseball's steroid era. For the cost of about $20 million, Mitchell generated what was mostly a cut-and-paste job of previously published confessions and revelations. After reading the report, one baseball executive drolly noted that an office supply store could've put together something similar at a much lower cost.

The former senator did contribute some original work, using his ties to law enforcement to strong-arm former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski into revealing titillating new details. But in the end, the lasting impact of the Mitchell report was to cast the names of 86 players to the public mob to be tarred and feathered without respect to context.

The Mitchell report glossed over the sport’s institutional failures and didn’t touch on the specific decisions made by those in power. Mitchell picked out those 86 players, rather than acknowledging that over a period of more than two decades, it was likely that thousands and thousands of players in the majors and minors used performance-enhancing drugs.

Selig was elected to the Hall of Fame earlier this month, sparking some writers to say that if Selig is a Hall of Famer -- Bud Selig, the commissioner of the sport during the steroid era -- well, then just let in all the cheats, because Selig enabled the problem. Selig was a big part of the problem. Selig was a source of the problem.

This line of thinking is as unfair and ridiculous as the Mitchell report: Context means everything. Context matters.

Blaming Selig as an architect of the steroid era is like singling out the driver of the 15th car in a 50-car pileup. While it may satisfy the social-media-fueled craving to identify a villain, it’s not close to providing an accurate portrayal, and it’s incredibly unfair.

In an interview with Jayson Stark right after his election, Selig acknowledged his failings during the steroid era: "Maybe I should have said more."

He is exactly right. From his platform as commissioner, Selig had the opportunity to say more about the problem, which had become apparent in baseball as early as 1988, when Jose Canseco answered questions about his steroid use on camera before Game 1 of the World Series -- just weeks after Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson's notorious PED bust in the Olympics. Selig was quoted in 1995 by Bob Nightengale in a piece about a growing steroid problem, along with Tony Gwynn and Frank Thomas, but only said, "maybe it's time" to consider whether there is an issue.

Selig could've spoken more about it, but that’s about all he could've done on his own, because at the time, the players' association was resolute: It would not permit drug-testing for steroids, out of respect for the players' privacy rights. The strongest union in the world was entrenched, immovable on this issue in the mid-'90s. If Selig and the owners he represented had tried to invoke testing for Major League Baseball players, the union would’ve immediately filed a grievance, and the league would've lost.

PED testing was a nonstarter for the union in the mid-'90s, so Selig and the owners focused on economic issues in labor talks -– and maybe that’s how it needed to be. The impetus for change had to come from within the ranks of the players, which remains the case to this day.

The failings of the steroid era begin with the users, of course, but also include the union leadership, which didn’t tap into the feelings of the silent majority who wanted testing, the clean players who were slow to coalesce, Selig and reporters who covered the sport, like myself. (I wrote about this in 2006.) I thought former San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers was the most honest about what happened during the steroid era when we talked in 2005: "The truth is, we're in a competitive business," Towers said in ESPN The Magazine, "and these guys were putting up big numbers and helping your ballclub win games. You tended to turn your head on things."

Not enough was said. Mostly, nothing was said.

In this enormous vacuum of inaction, more players used, a lot of them because they felt like they had to in order to keep up with peers who they believed were benefiting from PEDs. Former All-Star Wally Joyner gave voice to competitive pressure in a story in 2006, detailing the two moments he took pills, before he flushed the rest down a toilet. (And in an unconscionable choice by Mitchell, this landed Joyner among the 86 names in the former senator’s report).

The powers of a baseball commissioner are limited, because he is an agent assigned to represent the interests of 30 businesses -- not the fans, not the sport. The commissioner is not a dictator.

In spite of those limitations, and the boundaries created by the power of the union, Selig took MLB's first step to deal with the problem, instituting steroid-testing for minor league players in 2001 (which he had the power to do because most minor leaguers are not members of the union).

The following summer, in negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement, Selig pressed for some form of testing for the major leagues, probably aided by momentous events outside of baseball.

The players' association deserves credit for pushing the drug-testing forward over the past decade, for agreeing to more stringent testing for more drugs and for greater penalties. But the reality is that the union may not have agreed to the soft, first-step survey testing at all if not for the events of 9/11 and its aftermath.

With Selig and MLB insisting on some form of testing in the summer of 2002, the union was on the brink: Either agree to testing or risk a work stoppage. Players made it clear to the union leadership at that time that they could not halt the sport as they had in 1994, with the U.S. just months into its war on terrorism. Most players supported the concept of testing, anyway, despite the union’s longstanding doctrine.

Context means everything. And that is how the dominoes began to fall.

To cast Selig as a pivotal figure in the explosion of steroid use in baseball in the 1990s is to be completely oblivious to the practical reality of the times. Or it's a disingenuous attempt to escape untenable Hall of Fame voting rationale.

Here’s a more accountable way for Hall of Fame voters to explain a switch on the PED issue: I changed my mind.

To pick a small handful of names -- Selig, Barry Bonds, Donald Fehr, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire -- out of the thousands of those involved in the rise of steroids is just another form of retroactive morality by those who should strive to present appropriate context of baseball’s steroid era.

With 26.2 percent of the Hall of Fame ballots accounted for, Bonds and Clemens are polling at about 70 percent. There seems to be a realistic chance they will gain induction, writes Rob Bradford.

C. Trent Rosecrans is one of those who included Bonds and Clemens on his ballot.

If a writer is devoted to the fantasy of keeping the Hall of Fame free of anyone who contributed to the PED problem -- which is impossible, by the way, because PED users have already been inducted –- they should vote for nobody. Not players, not executives, not writers. Because everybody played roles, large and small, in what was a colossal institutional failure.